Formally speaking, distance is a measurement; it’s quantified through a process that in order to be determined requires conventions, tools and calculations to produce a universally recognised result. Nonetheless, if we look beyond the field of proof, not all distances can be measured or are necessarily quantifiable, causing the process used to arrive at a result to lose its “revealing power”. This allows us to see distance as a representation, in which, for example, distancing yourself from something becomes a cultural act, a way of highlighting a personal and social legacy rooted in a particular country and in specific experiences. A pathos, as theorised by Nietzsche, understood as “the sense of detachment, of always being outside of what is happening, going against the flow and every action aimed at making everything and everyone equal”. A mix of physicality, thought and perception, which, starting with distinct elements linked in a more or less pronounced way, is invaded by concepts of diversity and difference. Standing out, which is understood as an acknowledgement of distance, therefore presupposes diversity. Whether this is spatial or temporal, tangible or abstract, clear or random, little does it matter. What is certain is that it cannot be circumscribed within a quantitative definition, precisely because we must consider that measurement is, in itself, a convention, and that the space it generates can be a highly personal concept built on experiences and details. A gap, then, between pluralities rich in stories, subjects, objects and indeed differences. Thus, distance manifests itself as perspective, as a virtual relationship based on a point of view that implicates the cultural history of a people and the experiences of each and every individual. A sort of personal landscape, which we find in The Baron in the Trees, in which Italo Calvino identifies with the figure of the distant yet passionate observer, once again highlighting, if this was still necessary, the role of the intellectual, who is both an outsider to yet an integral part of the ways of the world. Seen from the inside, distance is a changeable form of becoming which, in its broader meaning, is a form of variety that must be understood and accepted, to prevent any type of authoritarian drift and any kind of elitism or inequality. If we start with the hypothesis that distance therefore plays an active role, we can forcefully extend this meaning to action, understood as both contraction and expansion, a sort of diaphragm that leaves the field open to variations that lie outside of the objective context and lead to a reflection on man and his relationships. We don’t necessarily have to focus on the notion of being far away, as distance can also be a form of corrosion that leads to convergence, to the proximity that might appear to deny it, but that in respecting the uniqueness of the individual, is simply a juxtaposition, and even an ‘overlap’. The gap that is created is therefore the encounter with the other outside ourselves, a process of humanisation in which the role and language of each and every one of us are essential. Existence itself is the distance between the acts of being born and dying, and we could define living as a process of distancing built on time, endeavour, experiences and incidents. The concept of distancing oneself therefore involves the active role of movement, of those who reposition themselves to see things from a different perspective, analysing them by changing their angle, which by extension, involves notions of tolerance, completing a journey and convergence. Measuring the extent of one’s own open-mindedness therefore involves examining how much we’re influenced by the concept of complexity and to what extent we’re able to accept it. The result is the distance between us and the other, between one culture and another, between one way of describing the world and another. In photography, the concept of distance intersects with the concepts of subject, photographer and framing, in theatre an actor performs at his best when he gets closest to the character he’s playing, expressing distance through identification, in music the distance between one note and another is called silence or a pause and is an integral part of a composition. These are just some of the many examples we could make that show how distance is a full and rich space, one that is to be experienced and explored – the very clothes we wear or the way we express ourselves become mediators in everyday relationships built on interpretations and overlaps of ourselves.